BAAOUARTA, Lebanon — Standing near his home in this hilltop village, a local real estate agent angrily listed the drawbacks of living uphill — and downwind — from Lebanon’s largest landfill.

The stench keeps residents off their balconies and depresses property values, said the agent, Fayyad Ayyash. Coughs and infections are common, and there are concerns about cancer. Some residents worry that methane gas collecting underground could ignite, threatening nearby communities with what he called a “trash volcano.”

“We live in fear,” Mr. Ayyash said. “And the state is doing nothing about it.”

This month, Mr. Ayyash and other residents, many of them members of the same Ayyash clan, took their worries down the hill and blocked the road to the Naimeh landfill south of Beirut, shutting down garbage collection in much of Lebanon and causing mountains of trash to pile up in the fanciest neighborhoods in the capital.

The sudden breakdown of one of the Lebanese government’s most reliable services accented the growing feeling here that no one is in charge.

Washington may lament partisan gridlock and a “do-nothing Congress,” but Lebanon does it one better. Since the government resigned 10 months ago, Parliament has scarcely convened, no major laws have been passed and the caretaker cabinet has lacked the political clout to set any important policies.

All of this has left the country without a unified approach to the huge influx of refugees fleeing the civil war in neighboring Syria, a spate of bombings that have killed dozens of civilians and gunfights between rival neighborhoods in the northern city of Tripoli.

Complicating matters are the deep schisms that have opened between Lebanese politicians, who back opposing sides in Syria. These disagreements have poisoned the political atmosphere and blocked the kind of consensus politics that Lebanon’s government needs to function.

In many ways, however, the current deadlock is an aggravated example of how the country usually runs.

Crowded into a strip of land smaller than Connecticut, Lebanon’s 4.2 million people are divided into 18 recognized religious sects and represented by an array of political parties, most of which have strong sectarian affiliations. Party leaders act as political bosses for their communities, dispensing jobs and patronage while striking deals with other leaders to serve their common interests.

The fact that so many big decisions are made through this process is what allows Lebanon to keep functioning in the absence of a traditional government, said Rami G. Khouri, director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut.

“The formation of a government in Lebanon is less significant than it is in other societies,” he said.

The gaps left by the central government contribute to Lebanon’s dynamism, Mr. Khouri said. The lack of an oppressive police state exempted Lebanon from an Arab Spring uprising and makes it a fertile environment for entrepreneurs, thinkers and artists.

But the government also fails to reliably provide services considered standard in other countries, leaving citizens to fend for themselves. Tap water is not potable, so people buy filtered water. Electrical blackouts are routine, so residents buy their own generators and fuel to keep the lights on.

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Collecting trash in Baaouarta, where residents angry over government inaction recently blocked the road to the local landfill.CreditBryan Denton for The New York Times

That system, however, is poorly suited to dealing with tricky issues that require a national strategy, like deciding where to dump the nation’s garbage.

“For those really big-sticker items, you need a clear consensus in a real government, and that’s why there is so much tension in Lebanon today,” Mr. Khouri said. “That internal consensus is not there, so the country drifts.”

This month’s garbage protest was a prime example of what can go wrong when the government fails to deal with national challenges.

For most Lebanese, the problems began on Jan. 17, when residents of villages near the Naimeh landfill, near Baaouarta (pronounced bah-WHERE-ta), blocked its access road to protest the most recent extension of the dumping contract. Within days, trash was overflowing from refuse bins and spilling onto sidewalks and streets.

The protesters pointed out that the landfill was created in 1997 as a temporary measure as part of an emergency plan. But it kept growing as subsequent governments failed to find alternatives, and by 2010, it was receiving nearly double the amount of garbage per day that was originally planned, according to a United Nations report.

In 2010, the government nearly solved the problem, when a group of experts developed a plan to build incinerators, said Bassam Farhat, who is in charge of solid waste management for the government’s Council for Development and Reconstruction. But before the cabinet could approve the plan, the militant group Hezbollah and its allies withdrew in January 2011, forcing that government’s collapse.

No subsequent governments have addressed the issue. “And we are still waiting for a decision,” Mr. Farhat said.

The protesters argued that they should not have to suffer because of the lack of a government to deal with the country’s waste.

“Let them all see the trash in the streets and come up here to see where the problem is,” said Anis Ayyash, a retired car mechanic who was staffing the protest camp last week.

On Friday, the police detained a lead organizer and sent forces to open the road. Walid Jumblatt, the most powerful politician in the area around the landfill, promised that the dump will be closed when its current contract runs out next year.

Mr. Farhat dismissed the residents’ complains as classic Nimbyism.

While acknowledging that the landfill had grown larger than originally planned, he said that it was run according to international standards and that residents could point to no scientific evidence that they suffered greater rates of illness than anyone else in Lebanon. He also called worries that the landfill might blow up “very far from reality.”

But virtually everyone agreed that only a body with political clout could solve the issue.

“You need to have a proper cabinet with executive powers to draw up the right decision, appropriate land and commit resources,” said Karim el-Jisr, the Lebanon director of the environmental consulting firm Ecodit. “A caretaker government can’t do that.”

That is little consolation for nearby residents, who have threatened to protest again if the landfill is not closed.

“You wake up in the morning and you want to smell clean air, but all you get is the smell of garbage,” said Ribal Ayyash, a truck driver.

Like most of his neighbors, he did not believe the landfill would be closed soon.

“There is no one in control of Lebanon,” he said. “We are living in the jungle.”

Correction:

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the location of the Naimeh landfill. It is near the village of Baaouarta, not in Baaouarta.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: A Breakdown in Government Wafts Uphill. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe